the house on
three legs.

So it comes to pass that I set out quite alone. I have no definite idea
where to go--I walk vaguely along, following my nose, as they say,
smiling foolishly, and talking to myself--now under my breath--now out
loud. A strong southwest wind blows steadily in my face: it sounded
noisy and fierce enough as I sat in the house; but there is no vice or
malevolence in it--it is only a soft bluster.

Alternate clouds and sunshine tenant the sky. The shadows of the
tree-trunks lie black and defined across the road--branches, twigs,
every thing--then comes a sweep of steely cloud, and they disappear,
swallowed up in one uniform gray: a colorless moment or two passes, and
the sun pushes out again; and they start forth distinct and defined,
each little shoot and great limb, into new life on the bright ground. I
laugh out loud, out of sheer jollity, as I watch the sun playing at
hide-and-seek with them.

What a good world! What a handsome, merry, sweetly-colored world!
Unsatisfying? disappointing?--not a bit of it! It must be people's own
fault if they find it so.

I have walked a mile or so before I at length decide upon a goal, toward
which to tend--a lone and distant cottage, tenanted by a very aged,
ignorant, and feudally loyal couple--a cottage sitting by the edge of a
brown common--one of the few that the greedy hand of Tillage has yet
spared--where geese may still stalk and hiss unreproved, and
errant-tinker donkeys crop and nibble undisturbed--

"Where the golden furze
With its green thin spurs
Doth catch at the maiden's gown."

It is altogether a choice and goodly walk; next to nothing of the tame
high-road. The path leads through a deep wooded dell; over purple
plough-lands; down retired lanes.

After an hour and a quarter of smartish walking, I reach the door. There
are no signs of ravaging children about. Long, long ago--years before
this generation was born--the noisy children went out; some to the
church-yard; some, with clamor of wedding-bells, to separate life. I
knock, and after an interval hear the sound of pattens clacking across
the flagged floor, and am admitted by an old woman, dried and pickled,
by the action of the years, into an active cleanly old mummy, and whose
fingers are wrinkled even more than time has done it, by the action of
soapsuds. I am received with the joyful reverence due to my exalted
station, am led in, and posted right in front of the little r